Finn family murals

The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition

- Philip Oltermann

A white, hippo-like snout, matched in bulbosity by a well-padded paunch, no facial features bar a pair of inquisitive eyes: the simple rendering of the Finnish author Tove Jansson's protagonist Moomintroll was key to the enduring success of her series of children's books.

However, ahead of next year's 80th anniversary of one of the most beloved set of literary characters ever created for children, Jansson's home town, Helsinki, is shifting the spotlight to more complex marks made by the artist. Among them are intricate panoramas drawn in charcoal on tracing paper, oil-painted vignettes rendered on glass and monumental landscapes lavished on plaster walls.

Paradise, an exhibition at the Helsinki Art Museum, focuses for the first time on the murals and frescoes Jansson was commissioned to paint on the walls of factory canteens, hospitals, nurseries and even churches - long before Moominmania conquered the world.

"By the end of her life, Tove was most famous as a writer," said the artist and author's niece, Sophia Jansson, now president of the board of the company that manages her copyright. "But she always saw herself first and foremost [as] a painter. It was only later that her reputation as the 'Moomin woman' overtook her."

Jansson, who died in 2001, was a modern Renaissance woman who produced books, plays, set designs, puppets and songs. In recent years, her oil paintings have been the subject of increasing interest to collectors, with one still life fetching €383,800 ($415,000) at auction in 2023.

Yet Jansson's public work has long been overlooked, in part because her commissioned pieces were considered separate from her artistic practice, and because many have been destroyed or walled up. Sophia Jansson said she realised she "hadn't seen half of them" until the museum attempted to track down the remaining works.